It is frequently the lot of bass players to find themselves overlooked while lead guitarists and vocalists lap up all the acclaim, but there has never been a great band without a great bass player. The New York band Television was a case in point. Hailed by the Philadelphia Inquirer as “the best guitar band to come out of New York’s late-70s punk/new-wave scene”, the group became renowned for the otherworldly guitar interplay between Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, heard to most stupefying effect on their debut album, Marquee Moon (1977).
However, Television could not have undertaken their intrepid musical adventures without Fred Smith, the band’s bass player, who has died of cancer aged 77. Their music frequently defied description, as Verlaine floated through experiments with tempo, tonality and atonality, hard-rock noise and almost-free-jazz expressionism, always testing the frontiers of what could be done with an electric guitar. Smith (in cahoots with the drummer Billy Ficca) lent unflagging support to this voyage into the unknown.
In a Guardian article after Verlaine’s death in 2023, the guitarist Chris Forsyth highlighted the brilliance of Television’s recording of Little Johnny Jewel, which had been the band’s first single, from the live album The Blow-Up (1982). “You could think of it as the A Love Supreme of punk,” he suggested, referring to John Coltrane’s jazz masterpiece, and described how “Fred Smith and … Richard Lloyd hold on to that riff for their lives, like rodeo cowboys on wild horses.”
Whether it was floating elegantly beneath the plaintive progress of Guiding Light, buckling up for the hectic blast of Elevation or maintaining a serene composure throughout the 10-minute odyssey of Marquee Moon itself, Smith seemed able to sense where the music was heading and what it needed. Never fussy or flamboyant, he would add careful gradations of tone and rhythm where necessary, and was always ready with a subtle but potent melodic variation.
The guitarist Jimmy Rip, Smith’s close friend and regular musical associate said: “If you are a lover of melodic bass lines and counterpoint, you could go to school on what Fred created so effortlessly. He was a natural – never flashy, always essential – always serving the song in ways that only the greatest musicians can.”
In 2001, Lloyd told Mojo magazine: “When [Television] got Fred, they got [Rolling Stones bass player] Bill Wyman in the band. Fred Smith became the stable element that allowed a lot of the interplay, to let the gears not look like a watch that had sprung, but to look like a very interesting group of gears moving.”
He was born Fredrick Lefkowitz, in Manhattan, New York, the son of Frances (nee Glasser), a sales assistant at Macy’s department store, and Samuel, a trumpet player. Fred began learning guitar and bass in his teens, and while attending Forest Hills high school in Queens, he was a classmate of all four members of the future Ramones. He also briefly played drums in a garage band alongside Tommy and Johnny Ramone (real names Thomas Erdelyi and John Cummings), and took Smith as his stage name.
His first significant career step was playing bass in Angel and the Snake, a group fronted by Debbie Harry and also featuring Chris Stein, which soon evolved into Blondie. Playing around the New York clubs, they would often be on the same bill as Television. When Television’s bassist Richard Hell quit in 1975, Smith rapidly volunteered to fill his slot. He commented that “Blondie was like a sinking ship and Television was my favourite band.” Blondie would go on to become global superstars and sell 40m albums. “Boy, did he make a mistake,” Harry said later.
Although it would achieve mythic status, Marquee Moon failed to reach the US Top 200 album chart, thought it rose to No 28 in the UK. Adventure, Television’s second album, was released in 1978, a beautifully crafted collection that would doubtless have earned greater renown if it had not had the giant shadow of Marquee Moon to contend with. Nonetheless it reached No 7 on the British chart.
But in July 1978 Television split up, though they would reform in 1992 to record a third album, and played live intermittently thereafter. At the time of Verlaine’s death they recorded tracks for a fourth album, which was never completed.
Smith worked on solo albums by Verlaine and Lloyd, and with numerous artists including Willie Nile, the Roches, Peregrins and the Revelons. He toured and recorded with the Fleshtones in 1988-89.
But at the end of the 1990s he found a new vocation as a wine-maker, in collaboration with his partner, the artist Paula Cereghino, whom he would marry in 2004. They began making wine at their New York apartment, then subsequently established their own Cereghino Smith winery at Bloomington in the Hudson Valley.
Smith is survived by his wife, and his brother, Arthur.
• Fred Smith (Fredrick Edward Lefkowitz), bass guitarist, born 10 April 1948; died 5 February 2026
